Spring and All
by Myrielle
Summary: "Rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken." Spring arrives, even in the heart of winter. Tauriel finds out just how much love there is in Thranduil.


Disclaimer: I don't own anything except the plot. All rights belong to J.R.R Tolkien, Peter Jackson, New Line Cinema and all the other powers that be. No profit is being made from this, seriously.

Summary: "Rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken." Spring arrives, even in the heart of winter. Tauriel finds out just how much love there is in Thranduil.

 _A/N: I caught a late case of Thranduil-itis and along with it, shipping fever. The quote and title come from William Carlos William's poem, and it's also a reference to Thranduil's name. It's been a long time since I brushed up on my lore, so be gentle with any errors. I am basing this short story on the movie-verse._

 **SPRING AND ALL**

 **I.**

 _There is no love in you._ That was only partially true. It was because he loved his people and knew the especial horror that death held for deathless beings that he wished to withdraw. He had not expected any actual bloodshed, given that there were only thirteen idiotic dwarves holed up in that city which was a broken shadow of what it had once been. Not until he heard the earth groan and felt it shudder, listened to muted roars that for one fraction of a moment, had struck him stark still with an ancient horror he had long nursed in his breast. 'Dragons,' every fibre of him had screamed. "Were-worms," Mithrandir had breathed and Thranduil realised he had begun doing the same. He despises Dwarves—Thorin has proven himself as dishonourable as Thror—but he will fight together by their side, if that is the only way to defeat darkness. When it is clear the city is overrun, Thranduil splits his forces, rides in alone first on his great Elk because he remembers his alliance with Bard who slew the dragon that Thranduil feared he could never defeat.

 _There is no love in you._ Eldar are proud folk, if their long and tragic history, at times gilded with starlight and glories gone by, is any indication. Still, the reek of Orc corpses, the precious bodies of his soldiers—he knows all their names, each one and counts the widows, widowers, the children left behind in the Greenwood—the walls and air that are drowned in blood and death with yet more waves to come...these convince Thranduil that no heirloom is worth the price of his people's lives. He is as foolish as Feanor, as any who has lusted after beauty and left such horror in their wake. The Orcs could take the mountain and have the jewels. All he wanted was the safety of tree and stone, to have his people back within the shelter of their walls and the skies they knew. He had led them astray and he meant to make it right.

 _There is no love in you_. Tauriel seethes with helplessness and fearful anger and it pricks something deep in Thranduil. He knows how she feels all too well. The first stroke had wounded his spirit so deeply he knew he would carry the pain even to Valinor itself. The second had come almost immediately after and he would spend the remaining nights weeping with his infant son in his arms, clinging to the one love that kept him from fading because he would not abandon his child. Her child. With her green eyes luminous with pain, with every line in her body crying out for him to help, to do something, Tauriel is his perfect mirror image of a thousand years before. And he cannot bear it. He would have liked to kill the pain, if that were possible. It is so tempting a prospect that he puts his blade to her heart but it is the well of his own agony that he pierces with that simple act. Thranduil does not tremble, but the mask of the cold Elvenking falls and Tauriel sees. She knows. It is truth exchanged in that quick pulse of a moment and neither of them can take it back, not even when Legolas sweeps between them and shows just how much more of a king he will ever be than his father. The scorn of his only son stings his heart, yet the hurt is soothed by pride. In the end, Thranduil stays and his army fights on. Never mind the news that a second fresh army of Orcs is coming and they cannot hope to overcome them. Two Orcs fall before his sword. He takes a third with a thrust that cleaves it in two as his company form a protective wall around him. For a moment, there is time and he turns his ageless eyes to the North. There is enough light to make out the gold of Legolas' hair; it too makes Tauriel's shine like liquid fire on the wind. 'Let them be safe,' he prays. He cannot go to them; he is the king and his people need him to rally them.

It is Thranduil the father that goes to Ravenhill to seek his son, fearing the worst when all the Orcs and foul things have fled, when Men and Dwarves and Elves count their dead, when Thorin and his sister-sons fail to descend along with the elleth who drew her bow on him because desperate love gave her the courage to. He follows footprints, uses instinct born of hunting in the Greenwood long before folk renamed it Mirkwood. He finds his son grieving, heartbroken because he has finally seen what came to Thranduil a hundred years before: Tauriel will never love Legolas the way he needs her to. Legolas wants to leave and Thrandruil, who has never, never allowed Legolas to step foot out of the borders of the Greenwood, sends him North to the Dunedain, where he will be of use and grow in strength. There, intuition tells Thranduil, his son will find his way, will have a large part in events to come which he cannot yet see. 'And if Legolas must mix with Edain it will be those touched with the blood of the Eldar,' whispers a small haughty part of him which will never be extinguished, not even by the horrors of war because he is still Thranduil, come what may.

It falls silent though when he steps out into the light, into a cold white space stained with blood and marked by grief. The wind will sing of it, long after the bodies are gone. Tauriel, daughter of the forest, Elven child and warrior, sits beside the body of the Dwarven prince she loves, holding his hand pressed to her heart, as though that will stem the tormenting ache she feels. At least she has that, if only for a time. Thranduil had only ashes to grasp and none who dared go near enough to behold his grief. So he does not leave Tauriel to hers, does not look away when she bends over to kiss the one she was robbed of. It ought to be repellent, it is certainly unheard of. But Thranduil bears witness to all that happens, because as he told her, her love is real. It is pure as the sweet agonised smile that spills onto Tauriel's lips before her mouth twists in fresh grief at the loss she has suffered and the loss of all that could have been.

He stays with her until the Dwarves come for their own. Tauriel's hands twitch as her eyes follow Kili down into the darkness while they bear him away. It is a spark that goes out along with his presence. She does not move a muscle, save for the tears that run down her face and Thranduil does not think she is even aware of them. Rather, she seems to collapse in on herself before his very eyes. She is so very young and now suddenly so old, she has loved and lost, she is banished and stripped of her post. She has nothing. It does not change the fact that she disobeyed his direct orders, or the fact that she dragged Legolas along with her in her rebellion. She did after all threaten him in front of an entire company of Elven warriors. But Thranduil understands, because he would have done that and so much more, if only he had been able to save his beloved. He has entertained dark and wishful dreams about bargaining with ancient and evil powers if it meant getting Eliniel back from Mandos' Hall. Usually these end with his very angry and exasperated wife beating sense into him with the flat of her sword and even just thinking about it there and then makes Thranduil want to laugh and he might have, save for the fear that it would turn to tears because Tauriel's sorrow touches his far too deeply.

He cannot give her back her Kili, anymore than he can get back what was lost to him. But he can give her a reason to keep her light, to stop what has already begun to fade with frightening speed. "Come with me," he says and king that he is, it comes out like a command. Tauriel blinks, sways as a blast of cold wind catches both of them, swirling his cloak as it kisses her lips blue and dries her tears. "Captain." That gets her attention, as he intended it to. Still, when she looks at him with her brow furrowed with bewilderment, he feels that a part of her is looking through him into something beyond. It chills his bones in a way the surroundings do not.

"You will return to the Greenwood. If you so desire, remain here in Erebor until he is buried. Say your farewells. And come home."

Tauriel's face crumples and she weeps, great gusty wails that are inelegant, that should be kept behind closed doors because nobody should be privy to such naked agony. He did not expect his kindness to break her. She goes down on her knees, shielding her face with bloodstained hands. Legolas would have taken her in his arms by now. Even if they were not lovers, they are friends. But he and Tauriel... Thranduil is unsure of what to do for the first time in a very long, long time. So he hovers. He does step closer though, just in case Tauriel entertains thoughts of leaping over the edge in a bid to end her grief.

"I cannot," she finally replies, shuddering with the effort of quelling her sobs as she swipes at her tears with her fingers and somehow ends of looking more wretched than she already does. "I committed treason, twice over. I—"

Thranduil draws himself up to his full imposing height. "I know full well what you have done," he says sharply. The edge in his voice is reserved for her refusal, not for her deeds. "I know, Tauriel." He gentles his tone. "Just as you do." It is a reminder of that moment in the city, a burning memory already awash in the tides of the past but which will always return to the shores of the present. He is sure of it.

Her head comes up. There is a flash in there, somewhere, bright and true, and now Thranduil has more than an inkling of what it might take to bring Tauriel back fully. Legolas would never forgive him if he allowed her to fade but more than that, Thranduil has walked the bitterly long road that Tauriel is now taking her first steps on and cold as the years and his own machinations have made him, he cannot bring himself to let her walk it alone. Not when her plea for him to take this love from her so closely echoes the angry drunken ravings and fervent prayers he offered the Valar themselves. Not when he has sheltered her for six hundred years, the child of a highly favoured personal guard who lost his life in defence of his king. When her mother died of sorrow, Thranduil had her brought into his palace, had made her an unofficial ward of sorts. Legolas' tutors had been her tutors, although Tauriel had resisted any efforts to teach her courtly manners as fiercely as she now fought the spiders of the wood.

Perhaps therein lies the answer to his quandary. Tauriel would have to answer for her crimes, for crimes they were. But he would ensure that she received no more punishment than she could bear. His people would whisper, but her unusual status amongst them is already an established fact. She needs something to live for, and he is going to ensure she receives it. Returning her to her position as Captain might take some time, well loved as she is amongst the guard. On the other hand, there is the nascent bond he can feel forming between them. It is hours old, but forged in war and death, by love and suffering. He can use that.

Thranduil pushes away the worry gnawing at him as he offers his hand to her, bidding her to stand and follow. He will not, he decides, share more with her than necessary. No more than she has already seen. He can be careful with his answers. After all, he has danced circles around ambitious courtiers and in turn made them dance to his wishes. He can handle one fragile Silvan elleth. That, his mind later tells him in the dead of the night, when Tauriel slips away to spend the hours standing by Kili's side like an otherworldly guardian, is a lie. He is not so much worried about managing Tauriel as he is about what they now share, more so that he actually is sharing something with someone when he had shut out even his son. She knows almost nothing of him and yet she has seen into the great throbbing wound of his soul. It is not something he would have permitted; it simply happened, a profound oddity beyond his control. It has quickened him, breathed a little life back into some part of him so remote he has no name for it. Whatever it is, he cannot leave her as she is. Now, he cares.


End file.
